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If there were a way to reverse time and undo a very simple decision, Hvergelmir might've done it. By the time she realized her mistake, though, she'd gone too far to turn back -- and her aura had become as noticeable as the one she'd foolishly been tracking

Oh, she was certainly better at reading auras now than she had been when she'd started. She knew the difference between youma and Negaverse officers now, without having to think about it too hard: her mind classified them for her as naturally as it might classify the difference between the sound of a flute and the sound of a violin, even if they played the same note. Chaos.

Hvergelmir still made mistakes, though. In this case, her mistake was in sensing a Negaverse officer's aura and following it, thinking it must have been quite close.

She'd been wrong. It wasn't as close as she'd thought -- it was just much stronger than anything she'd encountered before, but coming from farther away.

It was an easy enough mistake to make, given her experience level -- if a stupid one. It was like smelling a burning building from several blocks off and mistaking it for a garbage can fire round the corner just because that was what you were used to. She'd met low-level Negaverse officers, so she now expected low-level Negaverse officers. But this aura . . . the closer she got to it, the larger and stronger it felt.

And it was so, so far out of her league.

But she'd followed it on a mission, and it was too late to turn back now. The source of that powerful aura -- a dark-clad woman in a heavy green coat, standing over (oh, God) a body -- had noticed her right back, and read her tiny little aura with no effort.

Hvergelmir had run away from Negaverse officers' auras often enough, afraid of another deadly confrontation. She could run again . . . but each time, it got harder to find an excuse. And now she had a reason not to run -- she had the information the Code had given to them on Olympus. The true history of the war. She could feel it sitting heavy at the bottoms of her lungs, like the choking swell of pneumonia -- something to be shared with people who had a right to know. People who she hoped -- she had to believe -- would act differently if they knew the truth.

It was terrifying, dizzying really, to try and convince herself that that was a viable plan, especially given how well her diplomatic efforts had gone over in the past. Here was a big fish standing before her, and herself a tiny, useless guppy -- and she was trying to convince herself that what she had to say to someone like this woman was somehow worthwhile. It seemed ridiculous.

But.

She couldn't run forever.

And the words the Code had shown her at her own wonder still glowed on the backs of her eyelids: I will seek no refuge in convention, but strive always to move forward with honor.

To move forward with honor. That was right; she was supposed to be moving forward, not running backward. Hvergelmir couldn't hide from all of her choices. She had to keep going before she lost her nerve, before she turned tail and ran. She had to put one foot in front of the other.

Hvergelmir came out from behind a wide lilac bush, hands up in the universal sign for surrender, distaff in her right hand.

"Don't shoot," she offered, her nervous mind supplying the incongruous phrase despite the relatively strong unlikelihood that the Negaverser was going to shoot her with a sword. Babbling had always been her strong point; making sense hadn't. "I just want to talk! You're making a huge mistake, you don't have to hurt people!"

Not the best opener -- but everything she'd thought about saying had gone out of her head at the sight of that sword and the crumpled body of the man on the ground.

So here it was. The big gamble.

Just like that, without a lot of preamble, Hvergelmir was being given exactly the opening she'd asked for -- and it was all too obvious what the consequences would be if she failed to be sufficiently convincing -- or entertaining. She was being given the very barest minimum of sufferance; with that and nothing else, Hvergelmir had to now convince a powerful Negaverse officer who'd no doubt taken any number of lives to get where she was today that everything she'd done had all just been part of a colossal misunderstanding.

Even she knew the odds were stacked against her.

But then, the odds of Hvergelmir winning a fight against someone of this Negaverser's power level (and toting a sword) had to be even worse -- so, in the end, what did she really have to lose? Stranger things had happened before, right?

And maybe there were some Negaverse officers out there just waiting to be told something like Hvergelmir wanted to tell this one. Maybe they hated their work all along and were just waiting for an excuse to give it up. There couldn't be that many people out there who just enjoyed killing for its own sake. She had to believe there were at least one or two of them who wanted the truth. It was the only thing worth believing, after all.

"I'm called Hvergelmir Page of the Cosmos," she said, starting off slowly. She left her hands in the air. "I'm not really a fighter. Or a soldier. I never asked to be in anyone's army, and I don't want to be. I don't want to have to follow someone's orders that I don't even know or trust. All I really want is to be -- free, I guess. I mean, look at me -- you can probably guess I'm terrible."

She gestured at her ridiculous costume, her lack of any sort of athletic figure, her general awkwardness. "And I am! I'm terrible. It's honestly kind of funny if you ever get a chance to spectate." She shrugged, looking aside. "But I'm not your enemy, and I don't want to be. I'm not a conquering invader from space. We don't have to fight each other."

Hvergelmir's arms were getting a little tired. She left them where they were, but she couldn't shake the untimely thought that this was probably going to give her, like, awesome triceps or something.

"I know they told you the Moon tried to take over the Earth -- and that the senshi are here to invade the planet and rule over it, and the knights are their allies in doing that . . . but it's -- it's not true. None of that's true. It's just a pretext that Queen Beryl used as an excuse to raise an army and go to war because the prince of Earth that she liked didn't like her back, and had an affair with the princess of the Moon. It's just -- someone's romantic drama."

She lowered her hands so they were open at her sides instead, distaff still held loosely in her hand to show that it wasn't at the ready -- even though, as weapons went, it didn't exactly cut the mustard, to say the least.

"Everything since then's been reactionary infighting and horrible, tragic, painful misunderstandings," she said. "That's all. There's no conspiracy, there's no hostile takeover. There never was.

"So you see -- there's no reason for us to fight each other. There's no reason for you to kill people. None of this is what you think."

Hvergelmir shivered, feeling herself grow cold suddenly. Something Avalon had said struck her deeply -- and her body reacted as though she'd suffered a wound, shortening her circulation to protect the flow of blood to her heart. In all her imaginings of what the Negaverse was doing, and why, she had missed something very, very important. Something so obvious.

Something she should have realized long ago. After all,
Schörl had given her a clue nearly a year past.

I went looking for trouble, as I often do. One of the greater watched me and decided my initiative in spying on the war was worthwhile. She gave me a choice -- die or join.

Schörl had said she considered that a fair choice, and that she didn't mind. She wasn't afraid to die. She believed in their cause.

But if someone like Avalon could be brought over to working for the Negaverse in fear for her life -- what if she still was? How many Negaverse officers were fighting because they feared their own superiors?

"There's no shame in wanting to live," Hvergelmir said. She took a step forward, knelt slowly to pick up what she now recognized as an Earth sigil. It was like Camelot's crossed circles, but this one was fractured into ruin, unwhole. She turned it over in her hand. I am a knight of Hvergelmir, the words rang in her head. I am a being of free will. "But a choice between dying and becoming someone's slave -- killing for them, becoming their dog -- that's not a real choice, a free choice -- and you shouldn't have to be bound by it. If that's what they did to you, that's not a choice -- and you don't owe them anything."

Hvergelmir took another few steps, hoping to demonstrate her sincerity by showing her willingness to put herself in harm's way to earn Avalon's trust. It didn't occur to her that she'd already been in just as much danger the entire time -- she'd never seen a Negaverser teleport; she had no idea they possessed the ability.

"You're very, very beautiful," she agreed -- but she looked down at the broken sigil in her hand again, and she had to wonder how on earth what Avalon had become was supposed to be complete. She could imagine a thousand sad stories behind what Avalon had told her, all of them just the sort of tragic drama that Laney would normally eat right up -- but this was real, and it was incredibly important beyond just the sympathy that a thousand imagined backstories stirred in Hvergelmir's heart. It was real to Avalon. It was real to the man on the ground.

Hvergelmir had assumed the problem could be solved by tackling the cause itself, tearing down the false banner. But it was people she had to convince. Confused people, troubled people, frightened people. People who'd been on this path so long they couldn't remember any other road. Just people. It was always just people.

She'd thought they were all fighting for fear of the invading army facing them, swords drawn to conquer. She'd thought she could just explain once and for all that that army didn't exist, let the knowledge sink in and watch the dominoes fall. But some of them, like Avalon -- maybe they weren't fighting for fear of the swords at their chests, but the lashes at their backs.

"You deserve so much better than people who'll threaten your life if you won't submit. Everyone does. And I won't fight you if all you want is to be safe."

It wasn't much of a statement, coming from a Page to a General. It was practically a joke. But as toothless as Hvergelmir was, being a first-rank nobody, Negaversers had still considered her worth killing -- which meant if she wasn't a threat now, they were at least worried she could become one someday. And it was worth saying -- that if Avalon ever wanted to turn around and use her sword against her keepers, she wouldn't find Hvergelmir waiting to stab her in the gut as soon as she finished.

It was over. She'd failed.

With a graceful turn of her wrist, there was Avalon's sword again, black as night and merciless, and in Hvergelmir's mind were all the times this had happened before and was happening again. All the times she'd petitioned for peace -- frightened and stupid -- and been met with violence. All the cold, hardened faces of Chaos's soldiers as history repeated itself again, again.

Fight, they were told -- and they fought.

And they turned the command over on her.

Fight.

And they offered her what they'd been offered: a chance to join them or die, a chance to become another cog in their war machine. A chance to kill others instead, and the flimsy promise that maybe, just maybe, there existed some good reason that you had to kill people. A threat and a lie.

Fight.

They offered her war either way, and called one of the two choices power and safety. And in Hvergelmir's hand was the broken Earth sigil, a fragmented echo of a woman who had wanted to live, and had only barely gotten her wish.

And now Avalon offered her only the sword. Only one outcome.

Fight.

In Hvergelmir's other hand was the wooden distaff she always carried. Underneath its gold paint, it was flimsy and not much use as a weapon, if it had ever been meant for that, but in answer to Avalon's sword, it was all she had.

In her time of need, she'd called out for help and the universe had sent it to her as a symbol of power, glowing in the air between her hands. A weaving tool. Harmless. Weak. Her weapon against Chaos was no weapon at all -- it was for making things, not for unmaking them. She looked down at it for a split second -- and in it, she suddenly though that maybe -- maybe -- she began to understand. She had not been given a weapon.

I am a being of free will.

This, she decided, was what the Code had wanted her to see. That choices weren't just the ones that were offered to you. Some choices, you had to make on your own. Some choices were more than just the alternatives you thought you could see.

This was not a war. It was an arms race.

Hvergelmir held her arm out before her, in answer to Avalon's upraised sword. Then, slowly, she uncurled her shaking fingers, letting her distaff clatter to the ground.

"No. I'm not your enemy," she said. "And I'll prove it to you."

A low wind swept the ground beneath them.

Hvergelmir's dress and Avalon's cloak fluttered. The man on the ground didn't stir.

The world had become quiet -- but Hvergelmir didn't notice. She was remembering words on a page of a book that didn't exist. A book hidden on an island trillions of miles away, in a forgotten corner of the galaxy -- where the universe had tried to remind her, in all its infinite wisdom, that she was a knight.

And knights swore oaths.

"I am a page of Hvergelmir," she said, looking up at Avalon again. "I am a being of free will.

"For so long as the Negaverse fights in the belief that you're protecting the earth from outsiders seeking to conquer it, I will not knowingly raise arms against any Negaverse officer, except to defend my own life. I'll fight youma running loose, but not you -- any of you. No matter what you do.

"May my heart stop in my chest if I break my word. Carve it out yourself if I'm a liar.

"I am a page of Hvergelmir. I am a being of free will.

"This I swear by my Code of Honor."

Light glowed around her for just a moment, shimmering whorls of color -- then it settled on her shoulder, searingly intense, and she felt something that stung like a sunburn -- and then the light faded. On her arm, branded like a sharp white-and-gold tattoo into her shoulder, was the crest of Hvergelmir, the same one that appeared on her signet ring: the star rising out of the well.

A seal for her oath.

Hvergelmir supposed her resolve would last as long as she did. It would have to, after all -- she'd just promised her life away on the bet that she could keep herself from entering into a war of lies and misunderstandings. She supposed she was going to have to make good on that bet -- or else her Wonder would, or Avalon would.

She'd burned a bridge to buy her enemy's goodwill, if only in the smallest measure; there really was no way but forward now. Nothing to do but play this new part to the hilt and hope she wouldn't live to regret it.

At least that made it a little easier -- she hadn't really given herself any choice of turning back. Maybe that was for the best, in a way.

Avalon didn't look terribly impressed. Hvergelmir supposed it was too much to hope that she'd stand there shocked, suddenly overcome with some grand change of heart -- but still, Hvergelmir had always been a dreamer. She couldn't help wishing Avalon wasn't so . . . listless. So incredibly hopeless. All the sparks she might've once had in her heart seemed to have long since settled into cold piles of ash -- at least from outward appearances. Whatever she kept secreted away in the inner corridors of her heart, a stranger obviously couldn't bring it out.

"You can come around for any reason," she said pointedly, trying not to look as Avalon picked up her victim again. She didn't want to see. Instead, Hvergelmir bent to retrieve her distaff, and for the first time, attempted the little trick Aquarius had once shown her, the one Avalon seemed to have mastered so thoroughly: she tucked her weapon away into a pocket of thin air. Remarkably, it went.

"I'm usually in the theater district. Or North End Park," she offered, keeping her eyes carefully averted. "It's up to you."

She turned to leave, unable to gauge whether or not she'd get an answer without having to look up and see Avalon's face and the unconscious man in her arms. Instead, she looked down again at the broken sigil in her hands, then curled her fingers around it and pressed it against her heart. She tried to think about only that -- only the thing she was hoping for -- not Avalon's black sword or the man whose life Hvergelmir had left at Avalon's mercy -- and not the haunting stare of those deep gray eyes, like a dove that had flown very, very far out of reach.